Almost Sausalito Cookie Bars

I ask you. What beats coconut and chocolate in a cookie recipe- especially if they happen to be gluten-free? Coconut and chocolate and macadamia nuts.

Okay, I confess. My all-time favorite cookies in those innocent pre-gluten-free days were not some hoity-toity gourmet bakery confection but those bagged big and bumpy Pepperidge Farm chocolate chunk cookies you could get in any East Coast grocery store. Yup. If memory serves me well, my go-to favorite featured coconut and chocolate. They might have been called Sausalito. Or some such California-evoking moniker.

In our quest to tweak one of our favorite dessert bar recipes this week my cookie-making husband and I came up with a chocolate chip coconut cookie bar that tastes an awful lot like those beloved crunchy-chewy Pepperidge Farm gems. We didn't happen to have any macadamia nuts on hand- but if we did I would have added some to the recipe.

And for those of you who loved dunking those Pepperidge Farm Nantucket Cookies into a glass of ice cold milk- Babycakes, these are dunk worthy.

Almost Sausalito Cookie Bars Recipe

If you have more patience than I did today, Dear Reader, you could wad up pinches of the dough [I'd chill it first], roll them into balls and plop them onto a baking sheet. Press very lightly- slightly. Hola! Cookies. Check after baking 8 to 10 minutes. I'm not sure how fast they'd bake but the average cookie bakes in ten to twelve minutes or so.